Conference calls are commonly used by businesses as a way to conduct meetings. In setting up a conference call, the host or organizer will typically ask the participants to call into a particular number, or to be ready to receive a call, at a specified date and time. In order to facilitate this process, various systems and applications have been developed. For example, applications having email and calendar functions allow a conference organizer to send invitations to desired participants. A desired participant can reply by indicating whether or not they accept the invitation to participate in the conference call. The replies from desired participants can be collected by the organizer's email and calendar program, to indicate to the organizer whether or not particular participants have accepted or declined the invitation.
At the start of a conference call, it is common for at least some of the expected participants to be absent from the call. As a result, significant time at the beginning of a conference call can be spent attempting to contact the missing but expected participants. Such attempts to contact missing participants typically involve the organizer manually checking to see which of the participants who accepted the invitation are absent from the call. The organizer or the participants must then manually locate a contact address for the missing participant, and attempt to contact the participant through one of a variety of means such as instant messaging, email or calling them to remind them of the call. This is a significant waste of time for the attendees that have joined on time. In fact, often time a critical person who has accepted, can not be contacted and the conference will have to be rescheduled.
In order to facilitate the initiation of a conference call, systems have been developed with options that automatically call out to designated participants. Where an initial call to a participant is unanswered, that participant can be called back at selected intervals. According to such systems, all invited participants are called. Therefore, time and resources can be wasted attempting to contact participants who have declined the invitation to participate in the conference call.
Other solutions require the conference host or other participants in attendance to use alternate communication channels in order to locate missing attendees. For example, attempts can be made to contact missing attendees by other modes of communication, such as email or instant messaging, that do not require the current attendees and/or the host to leave the call. However, this requires that the conference be put on hold. In addition, such techniques require that the party initiating the contact have all of the addresses and other contact information for the missing participant that allows use of such alternate modes of communication.